Editorial: No special favors for Bohn on Monterey County desal

Few people in this country have credentials to compare with John A. Bohn's. Among many other things, he is a director of the National Endowment for Democracy, which serves as a key link between the United States and Asia. He was a high-ranking Treasury official during the Reagan administration, a managing director of Burson-Marsteller, and special adviser to Korea during the Asian financial crisis. For seven years he was president and CEO of Moody's Investors Service.

The list goes on and on and includes, most significantly to the Central Coast, a six-year term on the California Public Utilities Commission, where he took a leadership role in the PUC's first attempt to get a major desalination plant built on the Peninsula.

Getting someone of his caliber to sign on to a private desalination venture clearly is a coup. Last week's news that Bohn is part of the DeepWater Desal team instantly added credibility to that venture. DeepWater is competing to be the first alternate if Cal Am's desal plans fall apart again and is exploring the possibility of an independent project that could supply water to Santa Cruz County as well as Monterey County. It also is exploring formation of a Salinas water utility.

Bohn gives DeepWater great depth in its finance and lobbying functions. However, his involvement also raises potentially sticky questions about the appropriateness of a former utilities commissioner becoming involved in competitive processes that will end when the PUC makes decisions that will take hundreds of millions of dollars from the pockets of water customers in the region.

The PUC has two fundamental roles, though it sometimes forgets the first. That is to ensure that the public receives proper services from various utilities, monopolies whose only cost controls are imposed by the commission, and to ensure that the utilities remain financially healthy and creditworthy.

The commission has been rightly criticized in the past for being far too cozy with the industries it regulates, at the expense of consumer protection. While Bohn's new role breaks no laws or regulations, it does nothing to mute those concerns.

As the Peninsula tries to solve a critical water shortage, the stakes are especially high. We face a very real reduction in our overall water supply unless we can find ways to dramatically increase the supply in the very immediate future. The process already has proved to be extremely problematic and the addition of a complicating factor such as Bohn's past regulatory participation could add additional uncertainty.

Bohn, who maintains a home in Carmel, oversaw the process when Cal Am sought and eventually won commission approval for its first, unsuccessful run at completing a desalination process. Bohn was so heavily involved that he delayed his scheduled departure from the commission until that first project was officially approved.

(After originally calling for stronger cost controls and greater public oversight, Bohn shifted positions at the end, saying that Cal Am and its public partners were providing adequate protections for the public. He also declared as the first approval vote was taken in 2010 that the project enjoyed "overwhelming public support." That project later collapsed largely because of friction between Cal Am and others involved and revelations about a Monterey County water official taking secret payments from the project management company.)

At the moment, Cal Am is working toward winning PUC approval for a redesigned plant to be owned solely by Cal Am, but DeepWater could be designated as the official backup in case Plan A crumbles.

Bohn is so familiar with the issues that his involvement actually could prove helpful to the process as long as everyone is clear about which of his many hats he is wearing. The PUC is strict about keeping track of contacts between commissioners and regulated entities or applicants. A long list of stakeholders is supposed to be notified of every communication. It is important that Bohn not be granted any sort of favoritism or exemption, formal or informal, because of his insider status.